Pope calls families to new evangelization

From the very start, our charism and mission as CFC (CFC-FFL) have been evangelization through family renewal. This has never changed, and in fact today is stronger in our consciousness than ever. Now the Holy Father, yet once again, affirms what is important in the life and mission of the Church. We are to work to renew the family, such that these families will become strong agents for a new and a renewed evangelization.

Let us move forward even more deliberately, in the very strength of God.

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Pope Calls Families to New Evangelization

CASTEL GANDOLFO, Italy, SEPT. 18, 2011 (Zenit.org).- Families who are living for Christ are among the protagonists in the Church’s mission to bring about a new evangelization, says Benedict XVI.

The Pope affirmed this today before praying the midday Angelus with crowds gathered at the papal summer residence in Castel Gandolfo.

Reflecting on the passage from Philippians in today’s liturgy, the Holy Father noted how the letter was written around the year 50 A.D., and therein was already a complete synthesis of the mystery of Christ: “incarnation, ‘kenosis,’ that is, humiliation unto death on the cross, and glorification.”

“This mystery itself became one with the life of the Apostle Paul, who wrote this letter while he was in prison, awaiting a sentence of life or death,” the Holy Father explained. “He writes: ‘For me to live is Christ and die is gain.’ It is a new sense of life, of human existence, that consists in living communion with the living Jesus Christ.”

This communion, the Pontiff said, is not with a mere historical figure, “but with a man in whom God dwells personally.”

“His death and resurrection are the Good News that, starting from Jerusalem, is destined to reach all people and nations, and to transform all cultures from within, opening them to the fundamental truth: God is love; he became man in Jesus and with his sacrifice he ransomed humanity from slavery to evil, giving it a trustworthy hope.”

Benedict XVI proposed that today “we live in an epoch of new evangelization.”

“The protagonists of this mission,” he said, “are the men and women who, like St. Paul, can say: ‘For me to live is Christ’ — persons, families, communities, who decide to work in the vineyard of the Lord, according to the image of this Sunday’s Gospel. Humble and generous workers, who do not ask any other recompense than participating in the mission of Jesus and the Church.”